A decade ago, West Nordic businesses were only just discovering how powerful a marketing tool YouTube could be. In that respect, film companies Kovboyfilm, from the Faroe Islands, and Sjónverk, from Iceland, were ahead of their time in exploiting the platform’s potential by posting short film clips to promote the region’s travel destinations. The idea came from the US, where New York City nightclubs were promoting themselves using short video clips on the internet.
The idea came from the US, where New York City nightclubs were promoting themselves using short video clips on the internet. The rest, as they say, is history, and most people today know what it means when something goes viral, and that when something does, it’s normally done so on YouTube. “Our idea was to have our films come up whenever anyone anywhere searched for something about the Faroe Islands,” says Michael Koba, the head of Kovboy Film.
In 2008, with funding from several businesses and a DKK 150,000 NORA grant, Kovboyfilm and Sjónverk started a project that had a simple goal: the two companies were each to produce 40 short films about their country.
By the end of 2009, all 80 films were finished.
It’s impossible to measure the effect of the films directly, but Koba is fully convinced that they played a role in the explosive growth of tourism in first Iceland and then in the Faroe Islands. The films focus primarily on the unique natural experiences that Iceland and the Faroe Islands offer travellers. For the two film companies, the goal was to introduce a different way of marketing tourism, one that benefitted the industry itself as well as the commercial film industry of which they are a part.
“For us, the project was a success: we made a solid contribution to the marketing of tourism in the Faroe Islands. We are proud of that, but, at the same time, producing the films was a great way for us to promote Kovboyfilm, and today we have established our name as a high-end production company in the Faroese commercial film industry,” Koba says.
